There are many reasons why kayak users find inflatable products desirable. Not only are such products capable of being reduced to a relatively small compact size for storage, but an inflatable watercraft is the only viable option when one requires the ability to carry, via a backpack, a watercraft to be used only selectively during combined land and water travail. Often times, a backpacking experience involves hiking over an extended land mass coupled with a river or other water body boating experience. It is simply not practical to carry a rigid non-collapsible watercraft, such as a kayak, over land to be used only when the trip involves aquatic activities.
Despite the obvious benefits inherent in an inflatable kayak, such collapsible watercraft have not been universally embraced. For anyone who has used products of this nature, their limitations are readily perceived. For example, most inflatable kayaks have no structural frame members and thus behave not like a rigid watercraft but instead like an undefined tubular member which rides atop the surface of a body of water and is difficult to navigate and is subject to control limitations. For example, unless a watercraft resides at least partially below the water surface, cross winds can easily blow the watercraft off course and make it quite difficult to handle.
Recognizing this, others have suggested frame members which can be employed together with inflatable tubes to provide structures which more closely emulate the characteristics of non-collapsible canoes and kayaks. However, in dealing with rigid frame members, challenges exist in providing the necessary backpack portability sought after in adopting a pneumatically inflatable structure in the first instance. In other words, rigid frame-containing designs provide little or no improvement over rigid non-collapsible structures when it comes to portability.
It is thus an object of the present invention to provide a fully backpack transportable pneumatically inflatable kayak which inherently provides the advantages of the prior art while avoiding its limitations.
It is yet a further object of the present invention to provide a pneumatically inflatable kayak, which, upon assembly, inherently provides the sought after aerodynamic and control attributes inherent in a rigid or framed structure while further providing the necessary compact size sought after by backpackers.
These and further objects will be more readily apparent when considering the following disclosure and appended claims.